Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Khalid Mahmood

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 12th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mahmood]

I thank the hon. Member for his contribution.

How do we assess and work with these radicalised people? A lot has been made of deradicalisation, but we need the right people, theologically speaking, to do it. We do not have a principal education facility to train imams who go into prisons. I had a friend who was deputy governor at HMP Birmingham. The prison brought in an imam to try to speak to somebody who was radicalising the rest of the inmates. After a two-hour one-to-one, the imam came out saying, “I think I agree with the inmate.” That was due to the so-called imam’s lack of knowledge. Just because someone calls themselves an imam, it does not mean that they are able to deal with this important issue.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Is the situation not even a little worse than that? There have been reports of imams from the Deobandi sect of Salafists being allowed access to prisoners.

[Mr Mahmood]

The right hon. Member speaks from experience of these issues. He is quite right to say that. It is very difficult for those who do not understand religion to put people into places of religious control and support. That is my clear point. We should have proper registration of people who go into these institutions. Anybody who goes into them should be required to have the proper qualifications and certifications, yet we let most people walk in, and we say that they can do this job. We have heard stories of radicalisation being perpetuated in certain prisons by some of the people who have gone into them. It is important that we look at how we move forward.

World War Two: Polish Contribution

Debate between Julian Lewis and Khalid Mahmood

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I am grateful to my friend the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) for giving way. May I add one more name to that list? General Sosabowski was in command of the 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, which fought so gallantly at Arnhem. We keep remembering the contribution of Poles to British victories. That was not a British victory, but no one contributed to it more gallantly than the Poles, the parachutists and those who came in the gliders, in that fateful battle at the Arnhem bridge.

[Mr Mahmood]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman, who is also my friend. That shows the determination of the Polish soldiers and personnel who fought in the war to treat it as their own as they defended Poland. The courage of the Polish soldiers has been recognised across the Chamber, and it must continue to be recognised and understood.

The hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) made a good contribution relating to her constituency. She talked about how important it was for the Polish community to play a role in the fighting, which again reminds us of the great sacrifices they made. My friend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pushed the sacrifices and contributions made in Northern Ireland, particularly in the Navy. The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant) spoke of the contribution made by his family, which must be recognised.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North said, many people changed their names after the war to integrate. Some might have felt that necessary, but it is now time for people to re-establish those names and recognise their heritage. The hon. Member for Henley mentioned the work of the intelligence services in capturing the V-2. It was a devastating weapon, so it was a phenomenal achievement by the Polish personnel serving with us in the second world war to get hold of it, reverse-engineer it and see what it did.

The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) talked about the contribution made in Scotland, particularly to the Navy. As we look across the United Kingdom, we see that people in every single area know where the Polish servicepeople made a contribution, and that is recognised to this day. We must now really push that recognition forward.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury and the hon. Member for Henley mentioned the creation of a permanent memorial. Will the Minister look at how such a memorial can include a real learning element so that schoolchildren and other people can visit and understand the heritage of those who came here and the support they gave us? While we had much support from the Commonwealth, with people coming across to help during the second world war—my maternal great-grandfather served in Burma—which was gratefully received, the particular contribution made by the Polish people was much welcomed.

Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Debate between Julian Lewis and Khalid Mahmood

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

We are here again to discuss the issue of stability and conflict in the middle east. It appears that we have not learned the lessons of a decade ago. I made one of my first speeches in this House, soon after my maiden speech, after 9/11. It is clear that we have not taken forward those lessons to provide stability for the region over the last 14 years or so.

Instead, what we and the US—using its influence in the Gulf countries—have done is to start to pump more money and weapons into Syria, which has further destabilised that region. Money has been given to people whom we may think would be our supporters and to those whom we thought were on our side. They were, we were told, moderate. We speak about the moderate Syrian people and about the freedom fighters, but the vast majority of them are affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation that the Prime Minister banned in this country. Yet we think that they will be our ally in resolving the issue in Syria.

A number of hon. Members today have said that the issue can be resolved only if we put more money and resources into the freedom fighters. Which of those freedom fighters will we support? The Muslim Brotherhood? Al Nusra? Will we support other extremist organisations that already exist? Will we support the unIslamic state in the region? I deliberately call it not ISIL, not ISIS nor IS; I call it, and Brummies predominantly tend to call it, the unIslamic state. That is what it is. It has no place in the religion of Islam of which I am a part. It has no place in any teachings of Islam. Those people who rape, murder and torture are carrying out things that are banned in Islam. They kill people because they might be Sunni; they kill people who are Shi’a, Christian, Yazidi and Kurds. They kill anybody who does not submit to their warped ideology. We have to be aware of what we are trying to do.

The previous Foreign Secretary went to Europe and said that we needed to lift the arms embargo against the Assad Government so we could supply those so-called moderate fighters. When he came back having made the great achievement of lifting the arms embargo, he sat down with the security people and they said, “Secretary of State ,who are you going to supply these weapons to?” Very soon he decided that there was no option of supplying weapons and decided that we would provide communication aid to those people. We create these types of vacuum. Senator McCain has been an advocate of a neo-Con policy in Syria, which is to make sure that we put in as much money and arms as we can. What we have not realised is that, as part of that effort over the past three years or so, we have created the vacuum that has allowed the unIslamic state to be formed in those regions, taking people from all the various extremist organisations there and making them even more extreme, more grotesque and more violent than any other organisation—

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I am anxious to give the hon. Gentleman an extra minute, because I want to hear what he thinks we should and should not do in the situation we face today. He is in danger of getting to the end of his speech without telling us.